We were told it was to save money, but there were no money savings in it. Then they went in a big swoop, and we've being trying to understand the details. You could see where the problems were going to be. Again, they got way too prescriptive.
We would go back and say, “Why are you doing email? Why do you want to consolidate email? Can you not communicate today? What's the reason? Is it just that you want to have the end of the email the same so people can find you?”
That's the part that doesn't happen in government. The “why” part doesn't happen. What happens is that everybody jumps to “how”, and that becomes problematic. At a leadership level, it's extremely important to stay focused on the why and the who. Who was Shared Services set up for?